Will it be the third time lucky this year for the Tories as they embark on their next prime minister?
Rishi Sunak told his colleagues yesterday – painfully aware that their opinion poll ratings are on the floor, if not crashing through the basement – that they must “unite or die”.
Here are five key challenges he faces.
Challenge one: a unity cabinet
Mr Sunak said he would create a cabinet of all the talents, a phrase that is often used but too often falls victim to prime ministers wanting to reward their loyalists.
We’ll see in the coming hours how many of Liz Truss and Boris Johnson‘s supporters make it into the cabinet, with Jeremy Hunt widely expected to stay as chancellor.
One key appointment to watch will be whether Ben Wallace, who clashed with Mr Sunak over defence spending last year and backed Ms Truss because she offered a multibillion-pound increase, will remain in post.
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Right-wingers such as Suella Braverman, who threw her backing behind Mr Sunak, will expect jobs but also hold him to promises such as the scheme to send some migrants to Rwanda.
A cabinet that is a broad church means conflict behind closed doors, which can burst into the open – see Theresa May’s time in office. But the Tories want to see all strands of opinion brought in behind Mr Sunak.
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Challenge two: balance the books
The fiscal plan to balance the books is still in the diary for next Monday and the Halloween statement is set to be full of horrors. How it lands is a crucial test, especially as the Bank of England makes its decision on interest rates later that week.
A £40bn black hole can only be plugged by spending cuts or tax rises and a mixture of both is expected.
What will be protected? Mr Johnson’s spending review last year promised what was described as a record funding settlement for the NHS – of around 3.8% a year. Inflation, running at 10%, would wipe that away when waiting lists have hit seven million.
Challenge three: the austerity PM
Among the difficult decisions to be made in the coming days is whether pensions and benefits will rise with inflation, or those reliant on them will see a real-terms cut.
Raising benefits by the level of average earnings rather than inflation would save a few billion pounds. But it could destroy a reputation Mr Sunak has traded on since he launched the furlough scheme in March 2020 as someone who protects the most vulnerable.
There could be a heightened risk for Mr Sunak, who is married to a billionaire, of showing he understands the struggles of those on the lowest incomes.
Also coming down the track, and a key consideration when it comes to cuts to departmental budgets, is a wave of strike ballots over public sector pay. Telling nurses and teachers they cannot have a pay rise because the country can’t afford it could be a tougher sell for a prime minister with a gilded lifestyle.
Challenge four: Johnson and internal enemies
What about our former prime minister, who blames Mr Sunak for his downfall and has, at the time of writing, yet to say anything about Mr Sunak’s victory in the contest?
Mr Johnson, who returned from the Dominican Republic to mount his own leadership campaign, which he claims could have succeeded, threatens to be an alternative power base in the party and perhaps to criticise from the sidelines if parts of his 2019 agenda are dropped.
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Mr Sunak inherits an almost 80-seat majority but all his economic measures will require difficult votes in parliament.
The publicly declared supporters of Mr Johnson and Penny Mordaunt, the Commons leader who also ran in the leadership contest – and not those they claimed to have, make up more than 90 MPs. There is a sizeable pool of unreconciled MPs who could make governing difficult.
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Challenge five: is an election on the cards?
As well as having to get the economy back on track, and being Britain’s face on the world stage in dangerous times – something Mr Sunak has limited experience of, given his meteoric rise since he was elected seven years ago – he is relatively untested as a campaigner.
His constituency of Richmond in North Yorkshire is a safe seat and he inherits a Conservative Party seriously damaged by the past few months.
He hopes for another two years before an election and has no obligation to hold one.
But with even some Tory MPs calling for one, and more ominously, Conservative-supporting newspapers pointing out that he walks into Downing Street without a single vote being cast, he may – if it’s a rocky road ahead – struggle with an increasingly loud drumbeat to get a mandate from the public.
